Pages

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Chocolate Ale Recall - Contingency Plan!

The question has arisen regarding the replacement of an infected bottle of Boulevard Chocolate Ale as opposed to just a refund. As of now all Boulevard has stated is they are refunding the purchase price for a bottle of tainted Chocolate Ale. There has been no mention of replacing the bottles, which unless Boulevard has a secret stockpile would be impossible. However with my beer geekdomness (yes it’s a word) always at full throttle I do have some ideas.

I would talk with your friends, family, or co-workers that you know received a bottle and see if they are willing to trade you. I know this sounds like I’m being sarcastic with an overly simple answer but I do have reasons. Theoretically, the more hardcore beer geeks will be more interested in an infected bottle (assuming the infection is Brett as some people have guessed) and they might trade you. You might check Craiglist over the next couple of weeks for the possibility of people posting to trade. Second, if you have any out-of-town contacts I would have them check their liquor stores for any leftover Chocolate Ale bottles. The demand didn’t seem to be as high for Chocolate Ale outside of the metro and surrounding areas. Third, check out the Chocolate Ale thread on Beer Advocate. There was a thread on Beer Advocate forums discussing the wider availability of Chocolate Ale in other states. Several of the people on that thread offered to ship Chocolate Ale to people in Kansas City since ours sold out in 2 minutes. Of course, dealing with a stranger would be at your own risk so don’t take my statements as any sort of implied warranty. The problem…Beer Advocate went down the other day and the forums are unavailable at this time. I’m assuming they will be up sooner than later and they will still have their archived forums.

My final suggestion is to keep an eye out for local places tapping kegs of Chocolate Ale as specials. If I remember correctly, there were several tapping events last year that were announced well after Valentine’s Day. If none of these scenarios pan out for you, don’t sweat it. There are TONS of different craft brews out there so take the opportunity to try something different. Just think you have an entire year to begin entrenching for next year’s Chocolate Ale Day. Better stock up on some razor wire and bags of sand.

2 comments:

I have to agree with you totally about the demand not being nearly as high outside of KC or Missouri. When Chocolate Ale first hit our shelves in Austin it wasn't a hot item and I was able to grab a bottle at will. It wasn't until all the news came out about the mad scramble in the KC area that the bottles started to dwindle. I have two 2011-3 batch bottles I would be more than willing to trade somebody. I paid $9 a bottle at Specs locally and I've seen people trying to sell them for $30+ on Ebay. Apparently my bottles are from an infected batch and the two bottles I cracked the past few weeks tasted fine but I have no idea which batch they were from. If anybody wants a Chocolate Ale or two hit me up on BeerAdvocate. My tag is "lokieman" and have other bottles up for trade as well. Cheers...